I just heard the Madonna song "Like A Prayer" and it brought back memories of one of the most grandiose and crazy things I have ever done for a woman.
This was the moment when time stood still, and the time when two princes swept through the entire kingdom in a few hours, seeking their Cinderella.
My friend Dave and I were both early bloomers, we were both almost six feet tall and shaving, and both still in junior high school.
We were admitted into the nightclub on ladies night without ID cards because of our height and our 5-o-clock shadow; nobody there knew that we were only 15 or 16 at the time.
Dave had already figured that we only had enough money for maybe five drinks maximum, and told me that you could feel the effects of the alcohol more if you danced. That seemed like solid alcohol vs. bloodstream science right there. We each grabbed a vodka and orange juice and hit the dance floor.
We weren't dancing to attract the girls, we were just there to have fun. Fast dances, loud music and flashing video clips, added to a single vodka shot in an inexperienced bloodstream, and a large boost of adrenaline (what if we get caught for being under-age?)
We weren't trying to attract the girls (honest, Mum!), but they gravitated to us, possibly attracted by our big excited smiles (We were mostly happy about the "Hey! We're dancing under-age in a night club and we haven't been kicked out yet!")
Like us, the girls were up for a fun night out, and plenty of dancing. This suited us, because we could not afford to sit and talk over expensive drinks; dancing it was.
I cannot recall the names of three of the girls (despite later visiting one of the girls in her house, and having to walk 10km home -- that's another story).
Three of the girls introduced themselves, in a standard fashion ("Hi, I'm [insert first name here]"), and one of them, clearly the alpha girl, introduced herself with both her first and last name.
This is an important point. That small differentiation of confidence sets the mice apart from the men (think: "Hi, I'm Geoff" versus "Bond, James Bond".)
In my mind, the full introduction set her apart from the other three girls, as strong, confident and unafraid. It also gave me a project to work on over the weekend... (More on that in a moment)
"Bree Anderson," she said it loud and proud. She had much to be confident about. Tall, lithe and just the right amount of muscle tone: not a body-builder, more like a beach volleyball player. Long blonde hair, blue eyes like steel and water, both hard and soft at the same time. To me, she was like Marilyn Monroe, P!NK, Gwen Stefani and Madonna rolled up in one. Built like she could kick your arse in kung fu or beat you in a footrace, she still retained a 100% feminine look.
Bree was tall, taller than me by an inch, and as I looked up into those confident eyes, she asked me to dance the next song with her.
Agreeing instantly, we moved a little away from the crowd. Then the fast-paced music stopped, and the opening bars of Madonna's "Like A Prayer" came on.
Perhaps it was Fate, giving me a chance to dance a slower song and move in closer to the blonde Amazonian goddess. Perhaps it was the DJ wanting the hot and exhausted dancers to move to the bar and buy more drinks during a slow set. Destiny or DJ, I was taking full advantage of the situation.
We danced. It was magical. The song seemed like it was flowing inside my ears and eyes and running throughout my body. Time stood still as my dance allowed the rhythm to flow out through my fingers and my feet. Every moment seemed to last forever, lost in time like a transcendent dream or half conscious moving meditation. As I hear the song now, I can still picture her face, the light, the darkness, the softness.
We had a couple more dances after that one. I cannot recall the names of the songs, nor can I recall if we danced solo or back in the group. The magical transcendent Madonna moment was over, yet it would live forever in my memory.
Shortly afterwards, the girls had to go, and Dave and I also went home. We may have told our folks we were working, so we had to be home by midnight, like Cinderella leaving the ball. At least our stories would correlate, and after drinking only one or two vodkas, we probably would pass a stringent parental breath test.
We did not get the numbers of the girls, possibly because we thought we would see them again sometime, possibly because we didn't think of getting their numbers, possibly because we were just kids and had no idea what we were doing.
The next day, Dave told me some interesting information. The girls would probably not be going out again soon. It was a one-off special night for them. One of the girls had also confided to Dave that they were not all over 18, and were still in high school.
Having hold of two pieces of the puzzle, we quickly formulated a plan to track down our dream dates.
"Anderson" was a common surname, and there were literally thousands of them in the phone book. It was obvious that we could not ring them all and ask for Bree... or could we?
Knowing that at least one of the girls went to XYZ high school, we guessed that the school girl friends would all be at the same school. We then got out a map and drew an arbitrary radius around the school at a distance of around 20km.
We figured that anyone who lived more than 20km from the school would more than likely attend one of the closer schools to them, so we could literally "draw a line" around her probable location.
Then we went through the phonebook, line by line and looked up the location of every single "Anderson", to see if their street address was located inside or outside of the circle we had drawn on the map.
We managed to narrow down from thousands of potentials to around 500 possible matches, based on our map circle.
Dave took the first 250 matches, and I took the balance. He started cold-calling from his house, and I was cold-calling from mine. We would stop for five minutes every 20 minutes, to keep the line free, and so we could call each other if one of us was successful in tracking down our princess Cinderella.
I was getting close to the end of the list, and taking the agreed break before calling the final 15 numbers. My phone rang and Dave sounded excited. "I found her mate!"
Bree's mum had answered the phone, and Dave lied and said he was her friend from school (you don't want to tell the mother of your princess that you met her daughter in a nightclub, especially if she was under-age).
Her mum said that Bree was away for the week, on a military camp, (wait for it)... with her boyfriend.
Granted, I was a little disappointed that my newly-discovered goddess had a boyfriend, but we got through, and knew the number and the address. Dave didn't mind about Bree's boyfriend, as he had fancied the shorter brunette, and now he had Bree's number, he could track down his own princess.
As it turned out, Bree and her boyfriend had been together for a year (almost forever in highschool terms), and had joined the Army Reserves together.
The army story explained her fitness, and knowing that he was in the army also, I now imagined her boyfriend as some Rambo-like behemoth who would rend me limb from limb if he knew I was dancing with his princess.
Dave didn't leave a message with Bree's mum, that was too easy, too unreliable, and would require leaving a name and phone number with a responsible adult, who may ask questions if she called my house and my folks answered.
We knew what day Bree would arrive home, and fortunately it was after McPayday.
Dave and I agreed to split the cost of a bunch of flowers, and send a bouquet with a card to our new buddy Bree, to greet her on her arrival home from army camp.
Being that we were mysterious, inexperienced, or just plain chicken, we didn't leave names or numbers on the card, just said "Dear Bree, Great to meet you. Thanks for a great time. Your secret admirers"
We let it go for a while, and then playing it cool, I decided to call Bree on the third day after the flowers had been delivered. By that stage it seemed like we had become the talk of the town.
"Hi Bree. Guess who? Did you like the flowers?"
Receiving beautiful flowers from an anonymous stranger, Bree had initially asked her boyfriend if it was him: nope. She then called the florist to see if they remembered who had come in and placed the order.
The florist reported that she couldn't be 100% sure, as it was a week of customers ago, but she seemed to remember a tall handsome guy who paid in cash and left on a big motorbike?
Nope: not even a close description of the two skinny junior high-school kids (who both rode pushbikes).
Bree had then asked a bunch of her friends at school; I mean, someone knew her name and her home address, so they must be in her friend circle, right?
Rumours flew around as the story spread from Bree's small circle of friends to larger circles and gossip networks. One girl said "Oh my god! Receiving flowers from an anonymous stranger: I could live my whole life of fantasies on that..."
After Bree told me her side of the story, I told her mine. Luckily she saw the romantic side and didn't call us stalkers :)
Now that communication lines were open, I heard the story about Bree's boyfriend. Yes, it was serious, and yes, she'd keep me on speed-dial in case they ever broke up :)
Meanwhile, Bree's friend who fell into a swooning romantic heap at the thought of having flowers from an anonymous stranger, just happened to be the same girl who was dancing with us on the previous Friday night.
She was a little more shy and reserved than Bree, and around six inches shorter than me. What she did have going for her was that a) she was single and looking, b) she already had met me, spoken with me, danced with me, c) she loved a guy who sends flowers and d) her dad owned a pub.
That story, and why her 18th birthday was our last ever date, is a tale for another time.
No kids, this is not a never-ending "How I Met Your Mother" story, this is a random memory that is not on Facebook, and it is the reason why, if you're ever in the room when Madonna's "Like A Prayer" comes on the radio, you will see a wistful smile glide across my face like a teenager on the dancefloor :) <3 :)